PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself near a police checkpost in the north-western Pakistani town of Bannu on Tuesday killing three people, including a policeman, the military said.
Pakistan saw a wave of suicide bomb attacks after an armyassault on a radical mosque in the capital last July, but therehas been a lull since the formation in March of a newgovernment that has called for talks to end the violence.
Tuesday's attack, in which a bomber travelling in anauto-rickshaw taxi blew himself up as a policeman stopped himnear a checkpost in the town in North West Frontier Province(NWFP), was the second since then.
"Three personnel embraced shahadat (martyrdom) including apoliceman and two civilians," the military said in a statement.
Four people were wounded, it said.
The new government, led by the party of assassinated formerPrime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has begun talks with elders ofethnic Pashtun tribes along the Afghan border with whommilitants have taken refuge.
The militants announced a ceasefire last month but latersaid they were rejecting negotiations mediated by the eldersafter the government refused to withdraw troops from theirstronghold areas.
Also on Tuesday, suspected militants shot dead twopolicemen outside a bank in the Swat Valley, in NWFP, in thesecond killing in two days in the region where the army hasbeen battling militants since last year.
The valley was a main tourist destination until last year,when militants rallied to a radical cleric trying to imposeTaliban-style rule and began attacking police.
The army launched an offensive in the valley in Novemberand hundreds of people have been killed since then.
The government last month freed an influential pro-Talibancleric, Sufi Mohammad, who is from the region and had beeninvolved in insurgency in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, in thehope of ending the violence in Swat.
In a separate attack, a pro-government tribal leader ingas-rich Baluchistan province, in the southwest of the country,was killed in a roadside bomb blast, police said.
A spokesman for separatist rebels fighting for control ofthe province's resources, telephoned reporters to claimresponsibility for the blast.
(Reporting by Junaid Khan and Gul Yousafzai; Writing byZeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)
